The decision to do foster care and adoption

I'm so excited to share the news but at the same time nervous about telling family and friends. We have decided to do foster care and from that, hopefully adopt an infant or toddler. I know everyone has a story of how bad foster care and adoption is and I'm afraid to hear the bad ones. And honestly if you have a negative opinon of it, I've probably read it or heard it before. It will not be new news to me. But at the same time, we do have the best family and friends any person could ask for so we predict there will lots of support and acceptance.

We are not religious by any means and one thing I've found out quickly is that many believe what happens to us is in God's hands, but it's not. We have paved our own paths in life, dealt with the consequences of bad decisions, celebrated the accomplishments we've worked hard for, and known that we must take responsibility and be proactive to achieve our goals and we must accept when we have made a bad choice. I can't leave having a family in God's hands, I just don't believe that's how it works.

After a lot of unhappy days struggling with infertility and trying to figure out why I can't have a biological child but so many undeserving people can, I've realized I can either be sad or I can figure out a way to build our family a different way. Even before Chad and I were married, there were conversations about adopting. I've always felt like it was something I wanted to do whether it was my first child or our last or all of them, at some point, we would adopt. I am extremely grateful to have married such a great man that has an open mind and can't wait to be a dad and give a child the best life one could imagine.

It's not a matter of me trying to convince him this is the right thing to do (which I am VERY good at doing!), HE thinks it's the right thing to do. Now foster care on the other hand is something neither one of us has talked about doing before recently; we've talked about foster care in other ways such as we feel all kids deserve a loving family that will take care of them, love them, and give them oppurtunities to live a great life. But the more we talked about the "what if's" about US doing foster care, the more excited we got. It's funny because Chad wants toddlers because they are more fun to play with in his opinion, and I want infants! Now don't get me wrong, Chad is GREAT with babies, he just is. But he himself is a big kid that doesn't like to sit still so he'd love to have someone that he could teach new things to and play games. Our orientation will be in late January and until then I'm just trying to mentally prepare as well as Chad and I talk alot about how certain things will work, such as my work schedule (yes, i'll continue to work, mostly from home and some office time, and the kids will be in daycare 15-20 hours a week at the most), what ages and situations we'd be comfortable taking (as of now we've agreed on 0-3years old, any gender or race), whether our house is kid friendly or not (...there will be a few adjustments in the furniture) and how he needs to give up his guitar room so we can set it up as a toddler room, etc. Right now we have no idea on how long it will take, if we'll get approved (really, I'm not worried about this, really), and how long until we get our first child placed with us. Of course I hope it's soon!